Oranjestad – Erika Moran, an artist of plastic art that has gone through many phases in her life, sat down in an interview and told the story of life taught her what she had inside of her and what this can bring to others.
During the interview, Moran went back in time and talked about how she came to Aruba from Barranquilla, Colombia 14 years ago following love, and that led to her exploring the culture of Aruba. She would read the national anthem, learn the language and meet locals, all which in her thoughts were for a reason. “I connected with the tranquility of the island, with harmony, the beach for me is my therapy and through an immense search, I discovered that I had a lot of time without painting and I fell into a great sadness,” said Moran.
Depression is a word that she felt and lived personally. She feels the need to speak about this topic because she knows that “there are a lot of people out there at this moment, in all parts of the world, that fall into a great sadness. I discovered that this is a way that my soul would speak to me and tell me to bring out everything that I really am.”
In this search, everyone looks for what they can give to others and what the things we receive can give us, “but that is not what truly fills you,” Erika expressed. Moran discovered that she was looking on the outside for something that was already within her. “What I found was that I am an artist and through that I started to explore the nature of Aruba. I connected with its colors and through my artwork I wanted to transmit this to others.”
Through colors and the psychology of each one of them, she started to use her brushes to illustrate the fauna, flora and beaches to transmit an emotional state for people to be able to connect through her artwork with their emotional state. “Psychology through color can transmit calm, stress or a state of internal searching that represents the road of your sub consciousness and the road can be represented through the colors purple, blue, red, until you reach the color yellow that represents illumination. That is the message, to carry the greatness that everyone has inside. And that greatness implies art.”
Moran expressed that in her opinion, everyone has art and everyone is an artist. The only way each person can channel that is through art and that state of creativity includes different emotions like happiness, sadness, euphoria, that in turn the artist can relate to as well as every other person that has these emotions in them. “That was my journey to accept myself after many tries to be someone else, another version of myself. Now I am an artist and I teach others that we all have this capacity in us.”
The essence of coming to his world is to learn, and just as Moran emphasizes, teaching others how to learn is part of it. “We need to teach that although the road is hard, we have to connect with each other so we can be a lighthouse for each other. Imagine if we all could realize this? We can achieve a different world. We have to help each other and that way we can create a marvelous chain that will take time, but is worth it all.”
She also informed that she promotes events for our visitors to also learn art, tell their history of Aruba, talk about the touristic places and paints them as well. With this, people can connect with culture, art and gets a different experience of entertainment.
